Mistfall (2015)

Mistfall is the first story from the main range of 2015 and it’s a sequel to the 1980 adventure Full Circle. The thing about Full Circle is that for years I never rated it that highly and then all of a sudden I started to appreciate it a lot more and so when I heard that this story was being released I was mega excited. I like how it’s another Doctor with the Marsh creatures. I don’t think that people would need to have seen Full Circle but I think that it would help. I cant help but say that whilst listening to this I was remembering certain moments from the TV adventure and that made me enough this release even more.

The story sees the Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough make an unexpected return to E-Space. This is possible because of what Adric did in Earthshock where he worked out the coordinates. If I were Adric then I would be annoyed that I went through all that trouble and now back on my home world.

This story features Jemma Redgrave who will soon be reprising the role of Kate Stewart in the upcoming UNIT series for Big Finish. I liked the character of Decider Lana Merrion. Under her leadership they are trying to understand the changes that take place during Mistfall. Merrion is a strong leader who is a leader that does have a conscience and her actions are sort of understandable.

One of the many successes that the story manages to do is give a bit more weight to the Marshmen. They served a purpose in Full Circle and worked well there but in this story there needed to be more and we got that. The idea of their being a talking Marshman is something that makes sense because it would be hard to take them seriously in an audio adventure if all they did was grunt or something like that.

The splitting up of the main characters works well as we have Turlough and Nyssa together. This partnership is not something I remember listening to a lot so it seems quite refreshing to hear them work together. The Doctor and Tegan is something that does seem more familiar but they are well done. They meet the Starliner crew and at least they don’t seem to like they were in Full Circle. I don’t think that any of the regulars don’t pull their weight or are limited in what they should be doing.

If there is one thing I didn’t like it was the appearance of the spiders. I am not the greatest fan of spiders and so when they appeared in the story I didn’t like it. Apart from that the story worked really well for me.

The thing that I wasn’t expecting but was a nice surprise was that there wasn’t a proper wrapped up all nicely at the end type finish. It’s obviously going to be one of those series which link into one another which harks back to that period of the show. Mistfall is a good release and a nice companion piece to Full Circle. It’s written with nice characters and there is enough to keep long term fans happy who have watched Full Circle countless times and yet engage with an audience who haven’t had the pleasure of watching that story. There was a possibility that this story wasn’t going to match what we saw in Full Circle but I am happy to say that my worries were unfounded and this story starts the main range releases in 2015 off to a fine start.